Articles include: climate change stunting farm production; activists doubt transportation plan; Arctic sea ice loss and major snowstorms; coal mining in Canada; EV sales; cheaper and cheaper solar power; California drought and wildfires; Australia fire and flood; reversing efficiency rules; Texas activists fighting natural gas project overseas.
Tag: wildfires
NY Times Climate Fwd: March 24, 2021
Articles include: A trillion-dollar bet on clean energy; The Senate leader stalls an insurance overhaul; After a season of fire, floods ravage Australia; Fish farming is getting better; The seas are still vulnerable.
The Daily Climate, March 17, 2021
Articles include: In the Pacific, global warming disrupted the ecological dance of urchins, sea stars and kelp. Otters help restore balance; DOD reduces its carbon footprint to protect its bases; An urgent question hangs over catastrophic wildfires: What’s in that toxic smoke?; The Texas freeze set off a methane bomb; Wetlands can help prevent property damage and save lives during floods; China’s climate ambitions collide with its coal addiction; Europe seeks alliance with U.S. to tackle aviation emissions; During February’s freeze in Texas, refineries and petrochemical plants released almost 4 million pounds of extra pollutants
Study: California’s wildfire smoke could be more harmful than vehicle emissions
The Guardian: California’s wildfire smoke could be more harmful than vehicle emissions, study says. Toxic particles spewed by wildfires resulted in 10 times as many respiratory-illness related hospitalizations as other types of pollution, researchers found.
The thick, grey wildfire smoke that shrouds California each autumn and winter could be more harmful to humans than pollution from cars and other sources, a new study has found.
Coming at the heels of the state’s worst wildfire season on record, the findings add to growing evidence that extreme fires, fueled by climate change, will have increasingly dire health consequences for residents in the western US.
Tiny, toxic particles spewed by wind-whipped wildfires resulted in 10 times as many hospitalizations due to respiratory illness as compared to other types of pollution, researchers found in the study, which was published Friday in Nature Communications.
Study: California’s wildfire smoke could be more harmful than vehicle emissions
The Guardian: California’s wildfire smoke could be more harmful than vehicle emissions, study says. Toxic particles spewed by wildfires resulted in 10 times as many respiratory-illness related hospitalizations as other types of pollution, researchers found.
The thick, grey wildfire smoke that shrouds California each autumn and winter could be more harmful to humans than pollution from cars and other sources, a new study has found.
Coming at the heels of the state’s worst wildfire season on record, the findings add to growing evidence that extreme fires, fueled by climate change, will have increasingly dire health consequences for residents in the western US.
Tiny, toxic particles spewed by wind-whipped wildfires resulted in 10 times as many hospitalizations due to respiratory illness as compared to other types of pollution, researchers found in the study, which was published Friday in Nature Communications.
Video: California’s redwoods fight to survive after being scorched by wildfires
As Extreme Weather Events Increase, What Are the Risks to Wildlife?
The Revelator: As Extreme Weather Events Increase, What Are the Risks to Wildlife? Last year the United States racked up nearly $100 billion in damages from weather and climate disasters. These events are starting to take their toll on wildlife, too.
A hailstorm in South Texas. Tornadoes in Tennessee. Wildfires across the West. A barrage of Gulf Coast hurricanes. Those are among the record 22 weather and climate disasters that each topped $1 billion in damages last year in the United States.
In all, the price tag for 2020 hit a whopping $95 billion — and that’s just in the United States. Reinsurance firm Swiss Re put global economic losses at $175 billion last year, including $32 billion for floods in China and $13 billion in damages from Cyclone Amphan across India and Bangladesh.
The worst news? Our profligate burning of fossil fuels means we’re in store for more.
Studies show that climate change is supercharging some weather and climate events and will lead to more severe and longer-lasting heat waves, stronger hurricanes, an increased wildfire risk and a longer wildfire season. We can also expect more heavy rain events and severe droughts, not to mention other extreme events like February’s polar vortex.
Climate change: 5 places where global warming is a security risk
Thomson Reuters Foundation: Climate change: 5 places where global warming is a security risk. As the U.N. Security Council meets to discuss growing threats from a heating planet, here are some places where storms, wildfires and drought are fueling security risks.
From Louisiana’s battle with two hurricanes and an icy polar vortex in the past year to Kenya’s struggle with locusts, drought and floods, climate risks are piling up – and colliding with other threats like COVID-19, making them harder to manage.
“By the time you start to recover from one direct hit, another one is coming,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the International Military Council on Climate and Security.
As leaders of countries on the U.N. Security Council meet Tuesday to talk about climate pressures and global peace, it is increasingly clear that rising temperatures will fuel instability, from conflict to displacement, she said.
The impacts of a heating planet, such as scarcer water in shared rivers and more failed harvests, can hike existing tensions between countries, said Sikorsky, who is also deputy director of the U.S.-based Center for Climate and Security.
Study: California’s Rainy Season Now Starts a Month Later Than It Used To
Yale Climate Connection: California’s Rainy Season Now Starts a Month Later Than It Used To. The start of California’s rainy season has been getting progressively later in recent decades, and now begins a month after it did just 60 years ago, shifting from November to December, according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists say the delay in the start of the rain has prolonged the state’s wildfire season and exacerbated water shortages.
Last year was California’s worst wildfire season on record, with nearly 10,000 fires burning more than 4.2 million acres.
“What we’ve shown is that it will not happen in the future, it’s happening already,” Jelena Luković, a climate scientist at the University of Belgrade in Serbia and lead author of the new study, said in a statement. “The onset of the rainy season has been progressively delayed since the 1960s, and as a result the precipitation season has become shorter and sharper in California.”
New York Times Climate Fwd – January 27, 2021
Articles include: Biden’s Exec Orders; plight of sharks; firefighter’s toxic gear; emissions; landfills; Canada; weather